bostontrainguy wrote:Concerning Framingham, it is an important crossroads for CSX freight as mentioned. However, the town of Framingham has been very interested in buying the north yard for development. It is a valuable WATERFRONT parcel of land and worth a lot of money as residential property.
There are four yards in Framingham! It's freight yard overkill. What's the possibility of reactivating the former auto yard (unused old Adesa) and the also unused (old GM?) yard just south of it. There is plenty of room to actually connect the two and make one big yard. It would also be remarkably isolated for being in a developed area. The east leg of the wye to the mainline could easily be put back in. The west yard could still be used especially to send freight up the Framingham Secondary towards Clinton.
There's probably a deal to be made here. Framingham gets it's downtown tax-producing waterfront neighborhood and CSX gets a large sum of money and a larger more modern yard.
I have to agree with an extremely informed and knowledgeable F-Line (I really don't know how he knows and retains so much about railroading in this area, but that is the subject of another post!!), When the auto and CP yards were in full swing servicing the GM Plant, Framingham was constantly throwing hissy fits about the noise, hours of operation, and the blocking of state Routes 126 and 135 (and a few town roads as well) by trains at all hours of the day and night.
Even though the CSXT Framingham operations are just a skeleton of their former glorious selves, there is no doubt in my mind that Framingham would go nuts if the operations were moved to the CP yard and into the neighborhoods of South Framingham. I believe that there is nothing more that Framingham would like is to see CSXT pack their bags, pull up all of their iron, and get out of town fast so they can develop all of their land, and turn the rails into trails. As much as this makes sense, I think the possibilities are slim to nearly none.